


lost elf

by whitechapelcharlie



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Light Angst, a peppering if you will, and the implication that maes a sub, im cautious ok, just a lot of feelings, teen and up because of smooches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 20:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18667654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitechapelcharlie/pseuds/whitechapelcharlie
Summary: Solas finds his pre-Veil girlfriend wandering around Hafter's Woods during a routine Hinterlands trip with the Inquisitor. As if his life isn't complicated enough right now.





	lost elf

 As time passed -- he lost track of how much -- he found he could no longer remember the exact colour of her eyes. The lilting patterns of her speech became muddied and inconsistent and the ghost of her touch had faded completely. He had wondered, when he allowed himself to, if perhaps she might have been found by humans, or by superstitious Dalish. Killed in her sleep. If she might have gotten lost. Taken by spirits. He didn’t even know where she lay. Finding the cause of her absence felt like a monumental, hopeless, heartbreaking task. He didn’t want to find bones wrapped in her clothes. Like the rest of Arlathan, she was lost, and no amount of regret would bring her back; so it was better to face forward. To fix what was fixable and learn from his mistakes. To remember her as she was, and to honour that memory. Wasn’t it?

 

 He’d thought so.

 

 But now, as if summoned by one of Dorian’s ghoulish spells, she sat across the campfire, laughing, leaning forward to listen to the inquisitor talk, eating hastily cooked meat with her fingers, and he was trying desperately hard not to stare. She was… smaller, somehow. Thinner, paler, the green lines of her vallaslin and the tattoos she’d reclaimed them with almost stark black against her skin. Bruised, creeping, like an infection blooming in her veins. Black smudges under her eyes gave her the appearance of an insomniac despite the opposite being true. Her hair seemed strangely dull as well, another sign of poor health, and her fingernails were splitting at the tips. Her armour was Dalish, second hand and ill fitting. But apart from that, she was still clearly, painfully, herself. A tangle of emotions caught in his chest and he struggled to tease them apart. Now and then a thought would surface from the mess. She’d been here all along. Awake for -- years, weeks, months, even if she’d awakened mere _ days _ ago, that time was still lost to them and he _ felt _ that loss. What he wouldn’t give to pull her away from the inquisitor and into his arms. 

 Was this some kind of trick? A demon, acting independently, somehow?

 Or, did he simply _ hope  _ that might be the case?

 Was it less terrible to think of her  _ gone  _ than to think of her awakening to  _ this _ ?

 

 So far, she’d spoken few words to him at all, besides a greeting, in their own tongue, her eyes wide with shock. Through his paralysis, he forced a short, reticent reply that had given her something to work from in its tone. Since then, message understood, she’d directed her attention toward the inquisitor. She’d been following them, she said, because she was interested in the real driving force behind this  _ inquisition _ . And Solas believed her. The look in her eyes when they came face to face told him everything. She’d had no idea he was there. His cover was so well perfected that even Halla hadn’t tracked him down. 

 

 That evening seemed to last a lifetime. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin, exposed, aware of how ill fitting his disguise was. He thought he caught her looking at him once or twice. 

 

 The inquisitor found her intriguing enough to warrant an invitation to Skyhold. Solas didn’t blame him. The girl was a constant source of chaotic, curious energy, strange opinions and borderline nonsensical stories she presented as fact. So she travelled with them, and for days, she was close enough to touch and still out of reach. Perhaps he should have approached her in her dreams, but he noticed she’d become something of an avid tea drinker. A coincidence? Or was she sick of the fade?

 

 On the third day of their homeward journey, the elf girl who had introduced herself as  _ Mae _ sat at a respectful distance from him by the fire. 

 

 “What did you say your name was?” she asked brightly, in disturbing contrast to the sorrow in her eyes.

 

_ Her voice sounded like home _ . “I don’t believe I did. But, I’m Solas. A friend of the inquisitor’s.”

 

 “I like that,” she smiled. “It means  _ pride _ , doesn’t it?”

 

 “Yes.” he replied, bitterly.

 

 Mae held his eye in silence. She hurt for him, and he read it easily in her expression. Why couldn’t she keep that concern for herself? Why must she give all her love and patience to him, when he’d failed her so completely?

 

 “Don’t mind him,” Varric winked, leaning over to catch her eye as he misread their strained quiet, “He doesn’t play well with Dalish.”

 

 “ _ Thank you _ , Varric.” Solas sighed.

 

 “No problem.”

 

 Mae found it in her to laugh, and Solas glanced away, hiding a smile as the same image crossed both their minds, an echo of their first meeting. Varric hadn’t been  _ completely  _ inaccurate, after all.  
  


 

***  
  


 By the time they reached Skyhold, Mae had proven herself a worthwhile ally to keep; Cassandra and the other advisors weren’t surprised when the inquisitor asked to take her on board. The fortress was fascinating to her. She could be found on the battlements one minute and in the stables the next. She said she felt magic in its walls. The inquisitor said he thought someone had said something similar before, but he couldn't remember who. _I wasn't really listening,_ he grinned sheepishly. While she settled in and learned what she needed to navigate this little piece of Thedas, Solas kept his distance, wondering all the time if he ought to stay away altogether, let her take this second chance at life anew. There was always a chance that she might have changed. That her feelings for him had been lost to time.  
  


 

 Mae passed through his study late one night, glancing up at the last remaining people on the floor above before giving him a polite nod. 

 She’d taken a room on the battlements that was falling in on itself, overgrowing and pooled with water where snow had fallen through the crumbling ceiling and melted on the floor. There was a fireplace she could use, and she tore up an abandoned, half ruined painting and broke the frame against the floor to stoke it with now. Before long, the fire’s crackling filled her ears and provided a formless backdrop to her thoughts that allowed her to easily tune out from her surroundings as she stared into the flames. Her door opened without her noticing it. 

 

 “Am I still dreaming?”

 

 Startled, she looked back to find him standing in the doorway, leaning his shoulder on it and watching her with guilty, hopeful eyes and a faint smile. He seemed hesitant. Mae slowly got to her feet, maintaining their eye contact all the time, as if he might just disappear again. Swallowing hard as her vision blurred, she raised her arm and pointed.

 

 “Close that.”

 

 He pulled the door shut behind him and barely a second later, she pushed him against it, her arms around his neck, her fingers pulling at his tunic to bring him close as she kissed him as if she’d been waiting for it all this time. With his eyes closed, he could almost be back there. She was so familiar, so  _ real _ , that he found himself reacting without thought, dragged back in time and into a different version of himself. He half expected that if he opened his eyes, she would be holding him by grey fur, that his own hair would be hiding them from the light. His hands tangled in her hair, her teeth biting him between kisses, he felt moisture on her cheeks but couldn’t tell whose tears they were.

 

 “Where  _ were  _ you?!” she whined, “I tried to find you, I  -- I couldn’t  _ do  _ anything, it was all so  _ wrong _ , I couldn’t move from the place I was sleeping,  _ you left me _ \--”

 

 “ _ No _ , I didn’t, I  _ wouldn’t! _ I couldn’t find you either, you -- you were --”

 

_ Too dull a light _ . She didn’t possess enough magic for him to spot her in the endless expanse of the fade. At the time, he hadn’t realised that she wouldn’t be able to leave her physical location, so it hadn’t seemed so important to pinpoint it. Things had been… rushed. He couldn’t say it. It wouldn’t make any sense to her anyway. The dynamics of the fade, the veil, of mages and not-mages, all these things would take time to lay out for her, and right now, he didn’t have it. Right now, he wanted to memorise her warmth and the rose scent of her skin, to fill in all the blanks he’d been living with.

 

 She pulled away from him, her hands on his face, smiling but sad as she asked a question she feared she already knew the answer to. “What did you  _ do _ , Fen?”

 

 Words failed him. That name was jarring. His hands fell from her and he stepped back, shaking his head, suddenly hesitant. 

 

 “I am not who you remember.” he said quietly. 

 

 “ _I’ll_ be the judge of that.” she replied, forcing a note of humour into her voice despite her sincerity.

 

 “I can’t let you involve yourself again, _ vhenan _ . It’s too dangerous, you’re better off--”

 

 “I’m already involved.” she said.

 

 Reaching forward, she grabbed his hand and brought his arm around her waist, her other hand at the back of his neck. Her tone softened as his eyes fixed on hers, his resolve gone already, hands holding her closer. It would be better if she ran, but he couldn’t stop her from staying. More accurately, he didn’t want to. 

 

 “When’s the last time we did anything apart?” she sighed. He glanced aside, and she laughed. “Alright --  _ except  _ for that thousand or so years.”

 

  A quiet laugh escaped him, tinged with relief. It was finally sinking in that she was  _ here _ . That she was not only  _ alive _ , but it seemed she was exactly as he remembered. Already, he felt an identity he’d discarded wrapping itself around him again, settling over his shoulders and giving him back a sense of pride, of purpose. The thought had crossed his mind that they might find themselves changed, no longer so well made for each other. But she spoke, acted, looked at him like they’d been apart hours, not centuries. 

 

 “ _ Never again _ .” 

 

 She answered him with a soft kiss. When she broke away, she laughed again. She’d relaxed, he noticed, her smile easier and her touch lighter, lingering. 

 

 “What did you do to your  _ hair? _ ” she asked in a whining whisper.

 

 He gave an embarrassed smile. “It was -- noticeable.”

 

 Not only that, but he’d come to see it as a symbol of his own arrogance. Before long, he’d grown to hate it. 

 

 “I’ll miss it,” she said, “But I like this as well. Could cut  _ glass  _ on your jawline…”

 

 He looked away with a sigh of exasperation to cover up his sudden self consciousness and the pleased smirk that came with it; she turned his face back to her with her hand on his cheek and kissed him. 

 

 “ _ Stop looking away from me. _ ” she said in a half-whisper against his lips, “You’ll be lucky if I ever let you again.”

 

 He caught her hand in his, held it between them for a moment, then kissed the back of it. He might have laughed, if there weren’t so much painful weight behind her words. 

 

 “ _ My heart _ .” 

 

 “ _ My home _ .”

 

 He traced her mouth with his thumb, watching her eyes flutter closed a moment too long. A tear spilled over her lashes and she laughed at herself. How had he forgotten what colour her eyes were? Now that she was staring up at him, it seemed as if the image had never left him. 

 

 “How long has it been since you woke?”

 

 “I don’t know. Months?”

 

 “The inquisitor will want to know what arrangements have been made for you,” he sighed. “Whether you’ll be staying. And, he will ask about you. Out of interest. He is curious. We must come up with -- something to explain you --”

 

 “Will he ask before sunrise?”

 

 Solas blinked, momentarily confused. “No. He -- is not likely to be up before most of Skyhold, actually.”

 

 “Then ask me if I care tomorrow.”

 

 He gave a half smile and laid a hand on her hair, then kissed her forehead. “You know where to find me?”

 

 “Oh? You think you’re leaving? I just found you. You’re not going anywhere.”

 

 He smiled, but shook his head. “I don’t know if--”

 

 She cut him off with a kiss. Short, quick, then she pulled back again. He blinked, watching her with suspicion.

 

 “Perhaps it would be more--”   
  


 This time she did it harder, and a fraction of a second longer. Then again. Every time he tried to speak, she stopped him. Frowning, he took hold of her hair and tried to make her still.

 

 “ _ Mae-- _ ”

 

 She pulled him in with both hands and left him breathless when she broke away despite how hard it must have pulled her hair to do it. Or maybe that wasn’t a negative at all. He knew how much she liked that. But -- they couldn’t be too careful.  _ If she’d just-- _

 

 Mae didn’t even wait for him to speak. Anticipating some kind of scolding, she wrapped her arms around him, and something in him snapped. Shoving her back, he pushed her against the wall hard enough to hear it, acting without any conscious thought as he pinned her to the stone, kissed her, pulled her hips against his and her leg up around his waist. For a second, he felt outside of himself, grounded here only by her hands on his skin.    
  


_  I’ll be the judge of that _ , she’d said. Only then did he realise with no small amount of comfortable exasperation that she meant to hold him to it.

 


End file.
